Bring Down the
Bourgeoisie Through Workers Revolution!World Capitalism PlungesThe global economic crisis continues
to deepen, month after month. With the financial
crisis that exploded in September 2008, the
international credit system effectively froze.
In the past five months, there has been a sharp
drop in industrial production, investments,
exports, consumer spending, construction and
just about every other major indicator of
economic activity in virtually every country of
the capitalist world. In
the U.S, this is already be the longest
recession since World War II, and it’s not
ending any time soon. In
short, the recession is rapidly becoming a
depression, although the capitalist rulers don’t
want to say so because they fear that would set
off an even worse panic. The
underlying issue behind both the waves of
financial speculation and now the sharp drop in
the real economy is the overproduction of
capital, and the associated falling
rate of profit. Under
capitalism, the only way the rate of profit can
be restored is through the destruction of
capital, by massive bankruptcies producing
millions of unemployed, or by imperialist
war laying waste to productive capacity.
Or, as happened in the 1930s and ’40s, by both.
The
present global capitalist economic crisis is not
cyclical or even structural but systemic.
Neither monetarists nor Keynesians can solve it.
But as Lenin and Trotsky insisted, capitalism
will not collapse of its own accord. A series of transitional demands
should be raised pointing to the need bring down
the bourgeoisie and institute workers
rule. World
Capitalism
Plunges(19 March
2009)

Break
with the Democrats and All the Bosses’
Parties!Build a
Revolutionary Workers Party!

Over the
last 15 years, there have been
financial crises in a number of
countries around the world: Mexico,
1994-95; Thailand, 1997; Russia,
1998; Brazil, 1999; Argentina, 2000
to 2002; the implosion of the
information technology bubble in the
United States in 2000-01; and from
2007 on, the credit crisis in the
U.S. and around the world that began
with subprime mortgages. Yet this
time the entire capitalist system is
at risk. The stock market panic can
end up in a full-fledged crash, as
in 1929, while the lack of credit is
threatening to produce a new Great
Depression. The economists and
politicians who in the past acted as
prophets of the religion of free
markets are now nationalizing one
financial institution after another.
But the dire straits in which the
masters of the U.S. economy find
themselves will not by itself lead
to a positive outcome for the
international working class. In the
1960s and ’70s as well, the American
empire was bogged down in a losing
colonial war, along with great
social unrest in Latin America, and
a large-scale capitalist economic
crisis. But nowhere was capitalism
overthrown in the region. This is
centrally due to the lack of a
revolutionary internationalist
leadership.Forging that leadership
is key. From
Wall
Street Crisis to International
Socialist Revolution(2 October
2008)

On January
20, the baton was formally passed from
George Bush to Barack Obama as leader
of the the most powerful imperial
power in the history of the world,
presently mired in losing imperialist
wars and the deepest economic crisis
in three-quarters of a century. For
the U.S. to elect a black president
reflected a considerable social change
in this country founded on chattel
slavery, where Jim Crow segregation
continued into the 1960s – and where
in the 21st century blacks and Latinos
have still been prevented from voting.
But this has not changed the system of
imperialist capitalism one iota: with
Obama at the helm, the U.S. is bombing
Iraq and Afghanistan to hell,
marauding in Pakistan, supplying the
weaponry for Israeli slaughter in
Gaza, throwing millions out of work in
the U.S. while enslaving workers with
starvation wages around the planet.
Obama in office will preside over a
racist system, and he has already
become a war criminal responsible for
the deaths of scores of defenseless
Afghans and Iraqis. Labor
leaders are having a honeymoon with
Obama, counting on him to make it
easier to unionize by passing the
Employee Free Choice Act.
Class-struggle union militants look
instead to the power of the working
class, demanding freedom to organize
and independence of the unions from
the capitalist state. Obama
Presidency:
U.S. Imperialism Tries a Makeover(23 February
2009)

The election
of Barack Obama as president of the
United States was widely hailed as the
culmination of the Civil Rights
movement. Obama’s
campaign was based on the illusion
that the United States had moved
“beyond race.” The ruling
class used the occasion to claim that
this proves that racism in the United
States has been overcome. But racist
discrimination and oppression are
woven into the fabric of American
capitalism. Racist police brutality is
ever-present. Obama and the Democratic
Party political operatives who shaped
his election campaign stayed away from
any mention of struggle against
racism. Now black people are being
told to be patient. Yet patience will
not bring freedom any closer for any
sector of the oppressed. Gains won
through struggle can also be taken
back so long as social, economic and
political power remains in the hands
of capital. We only have to look at
the history of the Reconstruction
period following the Civil War.
Installing a black president won’t
change the racist nature of American
capitalism, any more than having Colin
Powell as chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff made the U.S. any less
imperialist. Today, “diversity” is
being promoted as an alternative to
equality, which capitalism cannot
provide. Genuine freedom and actual
social, economic and political
equality for blacks in America can
only come about through a socialist
revolution. Barack
Obama
vs. Black Liberation(23 February
2009)

For
International Working-Class Action Against the
Israeli
Militarists, U.S. Imperialism and Its Arab
Pawns!Zionist Mass Murder – Break
the Siege, Defend Gaza!Defend
the
Palestinian People – For an Arab/Hebrew Workers
State in a Socialist Federation of the Near EastBush and
Obama Back Zionist Butchers – Drive U.S.
Imperialism Out of Iraq, Afghanistan and the
Near East! For an Internationalist Workers
Party!At
midday on December 27, Israeli warplanes
launched a massive bomb attack on the densely
populated Gaza Strip. More than 270
Palestinians were killed as wave after wave of
U.S.-supplied F-16 fighter jets and Apache
helicopters dropped more than 100 bombs. The
Israeli military said they were targeting
Hamas installations, but numerous civilians
were killed, including a number of children,
as schools had just let out for lunch. The
Zionists’ attack on downtown areas was
deliberate mass murder. The Israeli slaughter
was carried out with the full knowledge and a
green light from its imperialist patrons in
Washington, as well as U.S. client regimes
such as Egypt. The Internationalist Group and
League for the Fourth International condemn
the Israeli mass murder in Gaza and call for
action by the international working class in
defense of Gaza and the Palestinian people,
including efforts to break the siege. Zionist
Mass
Murder – Break the Siege, Defend Gaza!(28 December
2008)

What
Will
It Take to Defeat the War?Not
Another Popular-Front “Peace Movement,”Mobilize
the Working Class to Fight for Power!On June 28-29,
an “Open National Antiwar Conference”
was held in Cleveland, called by a newly
minted National Assembly to End the Iraq
War and Occupation. Over objections from
the conference organizers, centrally
Socialist Action, the assembly voted to
change the name to include reference to
the war on Afghanistan, and to emphasize
the connection with U.S. backing for the
Zionist occupation of Palestine. (The
sponsors of the confab were so
right-wing that they feared losing
“unity” with Democratic Party supporters
of Israel and the Afghanistan war!) What
did not change at all was the
popular-front character of the new
outfit, tying it to the bourgeois
parties despite the fig leaf of
electoral “independence.”
Making
this utterly clear, it was decided not
to call a national antiwar mobilization
prior to the November elections
explicitly in order to court those
forces who wish to aid the Democrats
(and therefore want to avoid making
problems for the presumptive Democratic
nominee, Barack Obama). Here is the
leaflet issued by the Internationalist
Group at the conference.
What
Will
It Take to Defeat the War?(28 June 2008)

Against
Mass Layoffs: Workers, Seize the Plants
– Take to the Streets!
On December 5, the Bureau of Labor
Statistics reported that U.S. employers
slashed over half a million jobs in
November. At almost the same hour, the
Republic Windows and Doors plant in
Chicago was scheduled to close its doors.
But the furious 240 workers refused to
take it lying down. The largely immigrant
and black workers took over Republic and
occupied the plant, vowing to hold fast
until they won the vacation pay and
severance pay owed them. On the sixth day
of the occupation, J.P. Morgan and the
Bank of America, two of the biggest banks
in the United States, forked over $1.75
million to pay for Republic’s legal
obligations. The news of the occupation
spread like wildfire through the labor
movement. Many asked, could the Republic
sit-in spark a wave of labor struggle
using militant tactics seldom seen since
the ’30s? Republic was an inspiring
example of solidarity of Latino and black
workers. This time, as a small group of
workers won national sympathy. But if
other workers react to mass layoffs and
plant closures by following the example of
the Republic workers in Chicago, and they
should, they will be met next time by a
massive wall of repression and slander.
The key is to forge a class-struggle
leadership that can break the stranglehold
of sellout bureaucrats who chain the
working class to the Democrats. Chicago
Plant
Occupation Electrifies Labor(15 December
2008)

Organize Workers
Self-Defense Guards! For Workers Control of Production!Leftist
Union Leaders Assassinated in
VenezuelaBuild a
Leninist-Trotskyist Workers Party!On November 27,
three leftist union leaders in the
Venezuelan state of Aragua – Richard
Gallardo, Luis Hernández and Carlos
Requena – were gunned down by an
assassin. The murder came hours after
the unionists had led a workers
occupation of a Colombian-owned milk
plant which had been brutally broken up
by state police. All three were leaders
of the UNT (National Workers Union) and
of the USI (Socialist Left Unity), a
party which has opposed attempts by the
government of Hugo Chávez to impose
state control of labor, and has fought
the rightist opposition backed by
imperialism. They may have been murdered
by assassins hired by the Colombian
company, by elements connected to the
police of outgoing state governor, a
former Chávez ally, or by supporters of
a current official of the governing
United Socialist Party. In any case,
despite Chávez’ socialist rhetoric, the
reality of the bourgeois Bolivarian
“revolution” in Venezuela today is that
leftist unionists are murdered while the
forces of capitalist state repression
back up the bosses. While many leftists
have called on the Chávez government to
investigate, Trotskyists call for
organizing workers defense guards and
imposing workers control of production.
Venezuela today is stuck at a
crossroads. Building a Bolshevik-type
workers party based on Trotsky's program
of permanent revolution is key. Leftist
Union
Leaders Assassinated in Venezuela(4
December 2008)

Venezuela: Impose
Workers Control on the Road to Socialist
RevolutionSmash Counterrevolution
with Workers Mobilization! No
Political Support to the Bourgeois
Populist Chávez – Build a
Revolutionary Workers Party!On 2 December
2007, Venezuelans voted on a proposal to
reform 69 articles of the Constitution of
the Bolivarian Republic, adopted in 1999.
Both supporters of President Hugo Chávez
(who voted “yes”) and rightist
reactionaries (who voted “no”) portray the
measures as opening the door to socialism
in Venezuela. This is not the case. The various
changes aimed at strengthening
presidential power and instituting a
series of social reforms that do not go
beyond the limits of capitalism. The
League for the Fourth International called
on class-conscious Venezuelan workers to
cast a blank ballot (abstain) on the
constitutional referendum. At the same
time, in the face of capitalist attempts
to create artificial food shortages, the
LFI urged Venezuelan workers to impose
workers control on the entire
agricultural/food manufacturing and
marketing chain. Venezuela:
Impose
Workers Control(1 December
2007)

Mobilize Workers Action to Defend
Immigrant Workers!Lynch Mob Murder on Long IslandFull Citizenship
Rights for All Immigrants!Just before
midnight Saturday, November 8, an
Ecuadorian immigrant worker, Marcelo
Lucero was brutally beaten and then
stabbed to death by a lynch mob of
drunken teenagers in Patchogue, Long
Island. This is not an isolated incident
but part of a pattern of racist violence
against immigrants on the island, and in
Suffolk County in particular where the
county executive has made
immigrant-bashing his election trademark
and police regularly harass Latino
residents. It was the latest of a number
of deadly anti-immigrant attacks taking
place as the federal government
intensifies deportation raids across the
country. And it came only days after the
election of Barack Obama, the first
black president in the history of the
United States. Various immigrant rights
groups pretend that the Democratic
president will provide immigrants with a
“path to citizenship.” Yet both of the
partner parties of American capitalism
are in a frenzy to “control U.S.
borders” and treat immigrants as the “enemy within”
as they wage
imperialist war from Afghanistan and
Iraq to Latin America. It is up to the
workers movement and all defenders of
immigrant and minority rights to stop
the lynchers and the racist
rulers. Lynch
Mob
Murder on Long Island(11 November
2008)

Mobilize Working-Class Struggle to
Free Troy Now!Abolish the Racist
Death Penalty! Free Mumia Abu-Jamal! Troy Davis Must Not Die!There Is No Justice in the
Capitalist CourtsOn October 24,
the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals
granted a last-minute stay of execution
for Troy Anthony Davis. He had been
scheduled to be murdered by the state of
Georgia three days later. Now the
deadline has been pushed back at most to
November 18, but it could come well
before then. Davis, a 40-year-old black
man, was convicted of the murder of a
Savannah police officer in 1989. His
conviction rested solely on the
testimony of witnesses. Since the trial,
seven of the nine eyewitnesses have
recanted their testimony, several saying
they were coerced by the police into
fingering Davis. Three witnesses have
said that another man admitted to
killing the policeman. That won’t even
get Troy Davis a hearing, much less set
aside the guilty verdict, under the 1996
Antiterrorism and Effective Death
Penalty Act, signed into law by
Democratic President Bill Clinton,
which puts impossible limits on the
admissibility of exculpatory evidence.
Troy Davis is innocent, but Troy Davis
is black and this is capitalist America,
where black oppression is “enshrined” in
the system of racist repression. The
death penalty is a direct legacy of
slavery. The power of the working class
must be brought to bear, yet the labor
bureaucracy and civil rights groups
leaders are mobilizing their members and
resources to vote for Democrat Barack
Obama, who defends the death penalty.
The Inter­na­tionalist Group calls on
working people and the oppressed to
mobilize to stop this legal lynching, to
free Troy Davis and abolish the barbaric
death penalty! Troy
Davis
Must Not Die!(27 October
2008)

Canadian Federal Elections: No
Choice for the Working ClassForge
a
Revolutionary Workers Party!On October 14,
voters throughout Canada have been
called to the polls to elect a new
bourgeois government. The reformist left
has mobilized to denounce the rightist
policies of the Conservative Party and
drive it out of office, appealing for a
“strategic vote” in order to “stop the
right.” There is no doubt that the Tory
Party of Stephen Harper is deeply
reactionary, but the Liberal Party has
been the pillar of capitalist class
domination of Canada ever since
Confederation in 1867. It was the
Liberals who have led an all-sided
offensive against the social gains of
the working class since the 1990s. The
New Democratic Party, right-wing
social-democratic and Anglo-chauvinist
to the core, has come out for a
coalition with the Liberal Party, while
the bourgeois-nationalist Bloc Québécois
supports the occupation of Afghanistan
by the Canadian Army (throwing in a few
“humanitarian” concerns). The
candidacies of the two small Stalinist
parties are utterly reformist. The
League for the Fourth International does
not support, even critically, any of the
parties presenting candidates in this
election. The real solution lies in
building a revolutionary
Leninist-Trotskyist workers party that
seeks to rally the most combative
sectors of the working class at the head
of all the oppressed in the struggle to
overthrow capitalism. Canadian
Federal
Elections: No Choice for the Working
Class(9 October
2008)

Bring Down the
Bourgeoisie Through Workers
Revolution!No to the Bailout of the
Capitalist Speculators!Down
with the Dictatorship of Finance Capital!The financial
crisis that has been heating up since
early 2007 reached the boiling point in
late September. Credit markets virtually
stopped functioning. A full-blown panic
swept stock markets worldwide. The U.S.
economy is in the throes of a recession
that could turn into a Depression
lasting for years. In these dire
straits, the Wall Street speculators who
set off this crisis are demanding that
the government rescue them with a
bailout priced at $700 billion. The
actual costs will be far higher, a
trillion dollars or more. Meanwhile, the
Democrats are pushing hardest for the
Bush bailout of the banks. Presidential
candidate Barack Obama blames “greed”
for the crisis on Wall Street
(capitalism without greed?) and says
there must be no “blank check to
Washington” – meaning he's for putting
in a few conditions as window dressing.
Following in the Democrats’ footsteps,
the AFL-CIO labor bureaucrats called a
demo for “No
Blank
Check for Wall Street.”
Yet no
amount of regulation will stop the
boom-bust cycle of capitalism. Meanwhile
unemployment
lines are growing and a million families
were thrown out of their homes by bank
foreclosures in the last year. While the
fat
cats, Democrats and bureaucrats are all
going for the Bush bailout to prop up
U.S. capitalism, revolutionary Marxists
oppose this trillion-dollar
giveaway
to the Wall Street speculators, calling
instead for a program of transitional
demands leading to the expropriaton of
the banks and the entire bourgeoisie
through workers revolution. No
to the Bailout of the Capitalist
Speculators!(25 September
2008)

Initiative for
Haitian-Dominican Solidarity Against
DeportationsNew
York Protest Against Persecution
of Haitian Workers in the
Dominican RepublicOn
August
7, more than 75 people joined in an
emergency picket in New York City,
organized by an Initiative for
Haitian-Dominican Solidarity Against
Deportations. This was the first time in
recent years that groups representing
immigrants from both sides of the
Caribbean island and other defenders of
immigrants rights joined together in
protest against the racist treatment of
Haitians in the Dominican Republic. For
decades, the Dominican ruling class has
extracted superprofits from the
near-slave labor of Haitian workers.
Then after viciously exploiting them,
the Dominican bosses call in the
military to dump them back across the
border. The protest was sparked by
statements to the press by the Dominican
director of immigration that Haitian
immigration had become “unbearable,”
that recent immigrants should “return to
Haiti” and that Dominican president
Leonel Fernández should make this a
priority in his third term, beginning
August 16. The protesters declared that
everyone, in the U.S. as well as the
D.R. should have equal rights. The
Internationalist Group has regularly
participated in monthly protests
initiated by Grassroots Haiti in front
of the Dominican consulate, and in
organizing the August 7 united-front
initiative. The protest
received prominent coverage in Dominican
and Puerto Rican newspapers. NYC
Protest
Against Persecution of Haitian Workers
in Dominican Republic(August 2008)